Category Archives: hope

Twenty years ago, I would never have imagined where my life would be today. I am so grateful, but still have a tomorrow with decisions and relationships and choices that will affect where I am in twenty years time. I believe that eternity is in the hearts of all mankind, but am fascinated by the routes that many people’s lives take …and how they have arrived at this point, with unexpected twists and detours.

When I consider many of the great heroes in the scriptures, they never had a cooking clue where they would land up one day. Like Joseph, the young upstart, with amazing dreams of greatness who found himself falsely accused and abandoned in jail. He must have wanted to just give up as it would have felt so unfair. His relationships with his brothers were destroyed; he was separated from his beloved father and exiled in a strange land. . I know I would have felt like giving up and even scoffed at the stupidity of childhood dreams. And yet, after years of overcoming hardship and being faithful in the tasks he was given, his breakthrough came. In hindsight it was probably the difficult lessons that he learned in those tough times that gave him the tenacity and single-mindedness to accomplish the things that he did as the second in charge of Egypt.

In listening to the memoirs of Nelson Mandela I saw too how his struggles with unfair incarceration and pure injustice, placed him in a position to decide if this hardship would break him or make him. These tough decisions also shaped the strength of character that was required to lead a nation out of hatred into unity.

When I hear the dreams that young people have and notice the ease with which they become despondent with the lack of fulfilment of these ideals, , I wonder if we have, in our endeavour to encourage our children to dream, sold them a cheap and easy message that wont stress them into greatness.

With increase opportunities for education and the way we have encouraged our young people to dream big, I fear we have failed to mention how tough the road can be. The bigger the dream the steeper the journey can be. If their gifts and skills are more important than their character, they are likely to get disillusioned and disappointed. If we mentor the next generation by telling the stories of our mistakes and failures, injustice and hard times, they may have the courage to risk and fail rather than not risking at all.

Have we really given them the true reflection of what it means to be great?

Work is a privilege, not a right, and it is meant to be hard otherwise there would be no progression and no satisfaction. (We all have work to do … whether we get paid in money or not). In the same vain, if necessity is the mother of invention, then we will not move forward in creative innovations if we have no difficulties and no need.

So I think that, in South Africa at the moment, whilst there is plenty of need, there is also plenty of opportunity for our nation to grow in strength and creativity.

Let’s encourage and support our young people to take the narrow paths, with strong moral conviction, and build meaningfully, not just into themselves, but into our families and communities. Let’s promote spending a bit of time and money on their EQ ( emotional quotient) and not just on their IQ(intellectual quotient).May they be the type of parents they maybe never had, be the teachers they missed out on, be the leaders that they would like to follow and make this the society they have always longed to live in.

I love the quote from Kung Fu Panda where the teacher says to Mo,” the past is history, the future is unknown and today is a gift … that is why it is called the present”. Go next generation! Write a new story for this great country.

In High School I discovered that I could run! Previously, the furthest and fastest I had ever run was about 300 meters – the distance from the Primary School to my house. That was the day I got to school and realised that my shorty pyjama trousers were sticking out below my school dress. I had to get home and back before the school bell rang. I thought this only happened in nightmares, but it was my first middle distance event.

Anyway, back to high school. My brother, who was a distance runner and my sister, who was a senior then, coaxed me into signing up for an 8km fun run. I did it because I was entering ‘big school’ and wanted to please them. I was the 5th girl home. Their girl friends on the athletics team were so proud of me and I had no choice but to join the cross country team. From then on I loved to run. It was a way to be out in nature, breathe fresh, Johannesburg traffic fumes and detox from my age appropriate teenage moodiness. Also, the faster I ran, the more my blind spots were covered and the more liberated I felt from tasks requiring visual acuity.

By then I knew that I had Macular Degeneration and was also trying to prove to myself , and my parents and teachers, that I could cope well enough to not have to enrol at a boarding school for the visually impaired. I was such a home bird; there was no way I was going to leave home. Denial suited me perfectly as facing loss is very painful and only for the mature (which I was not). Running became my escape …running from pending vision loss and running to cope with stress and running to achieve my own goals so that I would be seen as capable. It all sounds a bit like Forest Gump… “Run Jenny run”. Anyway, it was fun …

…until I was the first to finish the race. I had no one to follow and I could not see where the right chutes were for my age and category. It was embarrassing to sprint to the finish line and break the tape, only to be told that I was at the wrong finisher’s table: “you are not a senior boy”.

I don’t know why I did not ask for help. I think my teachers thought I was pulling their leg that I could not see the signs. At least at Provincial level I was never first! There was always a bouncing, pony tail to follow.

Running opened the door for me to appreciate many beautiful parts of our country. There are secret gardens, green belts and forest trails tucked away in the middle of highveld cities and towns. Later I ran for EP (as it was called then) and so got to see beautiful parts of the Eastern Cape countryside – even racing in a team against the Old Apple Express steam train!

Through a particular running event I learned that achievement is very satisfying and gloriously addictive, but is not the key to feeling better about oneself and one’s value in society.

This significant race has been an allegory of my life. It was the final 1500m track event at the top 11 English schools’ meeting. I had won this event at every athletics meeting that season, so was under pressure to perform well and I anticipated breaking the record at this particular event. Those were the days when the good athletes wore spikes, but I never could get the hang of them and so ran barefoot – not quite as fast as Zola Budd! We ran as a team of 5 and each team had their own tactics. I was one of the targets to beat so we had our protective moves. There was a lot of tension and a bit of jostling at the start line, but finally we all got off on a sprint. Our pace setter was out front and I was immediately boxed in by two runners in front of me , two alongside me – one slightly ahead and one slightly behind – and someone on my heels. You get used to this kind of crowding and bumping each other, but I got a deliberate shoulder shove and as I faltered the girl behind me wearing spikes accidently (or maybe not) stepped on the back of my calf and left a long deep bloody scratch down to my heel. As I fell, I bailed out onto the outer lanes so I would not be trampled on. I got up and checked my leg. I was so mad!! By this time the others were out of my sight, I realised that I had not stepped out of the track and so could legally still continue the race. I decided then to finish as best I could. My indignation and sense of injustice and pain kicked me into high speed and I charged after the pack who was about 200m ahead. I cried and ran my guts out. I heard later that the whole school was on their feet cheering me on. It felt great passing the athletes one by one. I was so focussed on catching up to the next girl that I forgot to count the laps and I was relying on the bell ringer to announce the last lap. I only had one girl to pass.

She was about 10 meters in front of me so I paced myself to overtake her at the 300m mark. I didn’t realize that it was the end of the race until the girl in front of me stopped running at the finish line and the track official stepped out to stop me. He was very apologetic that they had forgotten to ring the bell. It was such a crescendo of mixed emotion – disappointment at being denied the chance to break the record, indignation at the injustice of the bell situation and pride at knowing that I had done my absolute best in the situation.

In my life race (as probably in yours too), I have been boxed in by vision loss, knocked down temporarily by breast cancer and even today, as I write this, I have been elbowed by the confirmation that my peripheral vision is also now affected. It sucks!

There is nothing like disappointment for figuring out what is really important in life. No trophy, medal or accolade can take the place of knowing deep down that you are valuable just because you are created alive and are cherished by a loving God.

I will get up and go on. I have a loving family and supportive friends who are cheering me on and I don’t care where I come in this race. It is a joy just to run it.

At band practise tonight we sang a song from Jesus culture “Your love never fails” and one verse made me think about this blog. Nothing can separate, Even as I run away, Your love never fails, I know I still make mistakes, But your mercies are new for me every day, Your love never fails”(Romans 8.35)